School of Social Work Public Service Announcement celebrates people with disabilities

July 22, 2013

For the first time this summer, the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin offered “Attitudes, Power and Oppression: Introduction to Disability Studies”, an upper-division elective.
As part of the class, students created the public service announcements at the top of the page in English and Spanish.

Here’s what course instructor Elaine Eisenbaum, a doctoral student in the School of Social Work, had to say about the creation of the PSAs:

I had originally intended for the students to complete individual projects of their choice during the course of the semester. When the course turned out to be very small I thought about the possibility of changing the assignment. During one of the first class periods, Billy, originally from Laredo, was concerned about the terms used to describe people with disabilities in the Spanish-speaking community in Texas. He questioned whether or not people who speak Spanish are ‘getting the memo’ about person-centered language. The class was interested in the question and I decided to scrap the individual student projects and instead let students take the lead on a class project designed to promote person-centered language and inclusion within the Spanish-speaking community by producing a public service announcement in Spanish. Along the way the students researched current Spanish terminology, met with community members, wrote a script, recruited volunteers to star in the PSA, contacted Spanish language television networks, and planned a community unveiling of the PSA. The students intend to use this finished PSA as an educational tool.